Holden to sack 300 engineers before the end of the year

HOLDEN is preparing to sack 300 vehicle engineers — half its engineering workforce — by the end of this year, three years ahead of the factory closures.

12/12/13 Holden closure at Salisbury plant Adelaide. Employees leaving holdens, shift change at holdens. 2:40pm Picture by: Roy VanDerVegt.

HOLDEN is preparing to sack 300 vehicle engineers — half its engineering workforce — by the end of this year, three years ahead of the factory closures.

Engineering work on an updated version of the Holden Commodore is almost complete and the services of at least half the test team staff will no longer be required.

The remaining engineers will stay on for another 12 months to prepare one final update before the locally-made Commodore reaches the end of the line in late 2017.

The engineers who will lose their jobs are based at Holden’s test track at Lang Lang on the south-eastern outskirts of Melbourne and at the company’s headquarters in Port Melbourne.

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Jobs blow ... Holden is preparing to sack 300 vehicle engineers by the end of this year, three years ahead of the factory closures. Picture of Holden’s test track which is not affected by the sackings.

The engineering staff at Holden’s car assembly line at Elizabeth near Adelaide are understood to not be part of the latest round of redundancies.

Holden has confirmed there is a redundancy program for engineers — which some media have estimated will see up to 400 job losses — but the car maker would not confirm when the job cuts would be made or how many workers are affected.

“As announced last year, Holden’s engineering workforce is largely tied to production of our locally-manufactured vehicles and as such our engineering workforce will be scaled back over time,” said Holden spokesman Sean Poppitt.

“The company currently has a voluntary separation program open to engineering employees. Holden has also (relocated) a number of engineers to General Motors headquarters in Detroit where possible,” said Mr Poppitt.

However, Holden “won’t engage in speculation on timing or the number of employees impacted”, he said.

Moving on ... Holden is set to sack 300 vehicle engineers.

Holden’s V6 engine plant in Port Melbourne is due to close in 2016 — one year before the car assembly line in Elizabeth shuts — and will cost an estimated 260 jobs, while the closure of the car assembly line in Elizabeth in 2017 will see the remaining 1500 employees there out of work.

Meanwhile up to 600 white-collar workers associated with purchasing and manufacturing, based at Holden’s head office in Port Melbourne, will also be made redundant before the company becomes solely an importer of vehicles in 2018.

However, about 140 designers based at Holden’s head office will keep their jobs, working on foreign cars for General Motors.

Holden’s Lang Lang vehicle testing facility is about 95km southeast of Melbourne and includes a 4.7km banked oval for high-speed driving, a giant skid pan, and 44km of sealed and unsealed roads that replicate real world driving conditions, including tram lines.

Every Holden introduced since 1958 has been tested and developed at Lang Lang.

The Holden test facility was very nearly sold during the Global Financial Crisis in 2009 — transport magnate and car enthusiast Lindsay Fox had reportedly expressed interest in buying it — but Holden announced earlier this year that it is keeping its proving ground (and a skeleton number of staff) to do local testing of foreign vehicles.

The cutbacks at Holden mean that arch rival Ford will have the largest automotive engineering and design workforce in Australia once manufacturing comes to an end.

Ford plans to keep 1100 designers and engineers on staff to develop global vehicles once its Broadmeadows car factory and Geelong engine and stamping plants close in October 2016.

This reporter is on Twitter: @JoshuaDowling